Story Draft: Social Media

Posted by & filed under My Work.

At 3:46 am, while Anna Darson slept next to her husband of thirty-two years, in a ranch-style house along the frigid waters of Lake Michigan on a snowy weekend after Thanksgiving, an event was triggered, causing a program to gather data from various accounts, which culminated in an email delivered to Anna with the subject line: John’s Journey is Complete.

Anna, her breathes rising and falling, steady as the snow gathering along the lintel slept on, no mobile device or push notifications to beckon from her bedside. Her dreams were unremarkable. Flashes of joy. Blurs from the weekend, from the past. Their daughter Abbie, up from Chicago, making pumpkin pie with her father, George, as the Lions savaged the Packers in a surprising win. The cold air against her face. The bark of the dogs, steam rising from their muzzles, as they bounded through snowdrifts and back toward the house.

It was mid-morning, the exact time unknown, when Anna turned on the laptop in the kitchen to check the weather, when she logged into her email account and saw the message. John’s Journey is Complete? She thought. Her youngest son, living in San Francisco, was there a race he’d run? Anna enjoyed seeing those automated messages when John ran a marathon. Without expectation, Anna clicked on the email.

At 12:46 am, in the city of San Francisco, John Darson’s journey through life came to completion. John wanted to share his story with you. And, so, according to John’s wishes we’ve assembled the following timeline from John’s connected accounts and recorded metrics. Losing a loved one is always hard, but leaving a legacy has never been easier. ~ Journ.ey | The One Less Travelled By

Anna re-read the paragraph again. What was this? What happened? Was, John? Was her baby, her son? Was he dead? She shut the laptop. Stood and walked to the kitchen sink. Her hands shook as she gripped the counter. Her eyes were vacant. Aching to be filled by the whiteness outside the window. The cold reality of winter. She imagined walking out the front door in just her bathrobe, heading east through the hemlocks as they gave way to taller pines. Taking off her bathrobe and laying down in the snow. Feeling the cold against her naked body. The melt forming to her contours. The silence beneath the pine bows, the scent of the needles as numbness set in and she slipped away. Slipped away from this moment and the harshness sent her way. Then, her thoughts came back to the present. George? Abbie? They were out cross-country skiing. No point calling them. Let them have this time together. Anna opened up a cupboard, took down a glass and filled it. She then went back to the computer, opened it, read the email and clicked on the link.

But, what was there to read? There was no story, no legacy. It reminded her of boxing up the household after her parents died. Letters, recipes, ephemera full of love, along with the marks made by her and her brothers: the mismatched doorknob her dad never replaced and the screen door, ripped by her brother, and stitched up by her mom’s careful hand. But this? This journey, what was it? Anna read the top entry.

November 30, 2014, 12:46 am. Heart rate: 0 bpm.

No context. Just a time and a number. Anna scrolled.

November 30, 2014, 10:17 pm. Status update: Fun catching up with friends. Time to head home.

November 30, 2014, 8:02 pm. Check-in: Ozumo 161 Steuart St, San Francisco, CA.

November 30, 2014, 2:50 pm. Status update: Everytime is the wrong time to go to Whole Foods.

November 30, 2014, 10:22 am. Status update: John logged 120 points for #running!

November 30, 2014, 10:20 am. Heart rate: 117 bpm.

It seemed like the page scrolled on forever, but Anna knew it was finite. There would be a beginning, just as there was an end. Photos, videos, status updates, locations, heart rates, blog posts, it all came together in this digital collage in which Anna tried to find meaning, to make sense, but all she found was loss. She called John’s ex-girlfriend and it went to voicemail. Does one even know the friends of their adult children? In the account from Journ.ey there was a page to download all of John’s usernames and passwords. Anna thought about doing this. Thought about sending a message out in the hopes that his on lie friends would respond. But, then she got the call from the hospital. A human being, a voice with emotion transmitted across the country. The railing on John’s balcony gave way. He’d fallen five stories and passed on the way to the hospital. Yes, said the councilor, it’d been sometime after midnight.

The tears felt like they came from Anna’s gut. Grief rose out from the center of her. Fought it’s way out. She’d hung up the phone, but wasn’t sure when. George and Abbie should be coming back soon. Anna had said she’d make chill for them. Have a pot simmering on the stove. She waited for her family to return, for the shadows to lengthen on the walls. Anna waited as the heat switched off, as around the world updates flashed across people’s feeds, and the house felt colder, more remote. The snow continued and beneath it’s weight a pine bough crashed to the forest floor, the needles spreading out, dark against powder.

Raph Koster’s Theory of Fun Revisted

Posted by & filed under Independent Study.

One of the assignments for the independent study I’m mentoring on video game theory and interactive fiction was to watch this talk by Raph Koster. Koster’s talk fit nicely with our reading of Caillios’ Man, Play, and Games, but tied those ideas with research from cognitive and evolutionary psychology. It’s a wonderful talk that combines game design, narrative, and science. Highly recommend it.
Continue reading “Raph Koster’s Theory of Fun Revisted” »

Review: MaddAddam by Margaret Atwood

Posted by & filed under Reviews.

maddaddamI have put on the red hat. I have eaten the fish. I have listened to the shiny thing. Now I will tell of Atwood’s book. Now I will tell of MaddAddam. The novel is the final one of the series. A novel is a work of fiction. It is a book. A book of stories. This story is about Zeb, Snowman, Toby, and the Children of Crake. This story is science fiction. Science fiction is not important anymore, since after the waterless flood Science no longer exists. Science was part of the chaos when people used Science to try make order out of the chaos. Science was a friend of Crake’s and with the help of Science he created you, the Children of Crake.

Atwood wrote these stories. They are very good. Yes, you should read them. Yes, good, kind Crake and good, kind Atwood. Thank you for writing these stories. You don’t need to sing. You don’t need to comment. Not everyone will enjoy these stories, but that’s OK. I don’t know why. Sometimes, people like different things. Please do not sing. I have a headache. Thank you. Yes, that is very nice. The story of MaddAddam is mostly the story of Zeb. Many things happen in Zeb’s past. The past is what happened yesterday and the day before. Yes, we all have pasts.

While the story continues from The Year of the Flood, not that much happens right away. Toby, the Crakers, the God’s Gardeners and MaddAddamites regroup, that means get together, and prepare for Pigoons and the painballers. Yes, the bad men. The bad men of the chaos. At the end of the story, some parts feel forced, especially with Zeb. To force is to make something fit that is too large. To force is to eat too much when there is no more room in your belly. Overall though, the story leaves you satisfied. That would be like the right amount of food, so you are not hungry, but do not feel bad. Yes, that is a good feeling. No, I will not tell you more. It’s time for sleep. Yes, you should read the book. Now I will take off the red hat. Now I will say good night.

A Few Thoughts on Maps, Graphs, Trees

Posted by & filed under Books.

Just finished reading Graphs, Maps, Trees: Abstract Models for Literary History by Franco Moretti. As a writer, I found Moretti’s perspective to be refreshing. He’s not deconstructing literature. He’s not parsing literature through individual perspectives and casting a kaleidoscope of meaning upon the wall. Instead, Moretti includes the 99% of the canon which is overlooked and aims to discover patterns through distance.

One part, in the section Trees, focused on detective fiction and the use of clues as a literary device. Invoking Darwin, Moretti classifies works through traits which are present or absent. In this example, the traits are clues and Moretti clusters works in which clues are absent; evoked; symptoms (medical); present, but not necessary; visible, but not decodable; and decodable. By looking at these trees over time, Moretti makes the argument for how the genre of detective fiction came to resemble a genre. Writers try, experiment, fail or succeed, and refine the process. As Arthur Conan Doyle competed for readers with other writers during the time period, he had the most success. Was it due to Sherlock Holmes or was it due to his ability to more readily recognize and adapt to his readers and the genre?

If our own time were analysed, how would zombie fiction or supernatural love stories look? Are writers in those genres paring down the process to what sells? What about the genre of literary fiction? Has enough time passed that we can hone in on the patterns? How would you approach literary fiction in this way?

Wonderfully snarky line from First Person:

Outside academic theory people are usually excellent at making distinctions between narrative, drama, and games. If I throw a ball at you I don’t expect you to drop it and wait until it starts telling stories. (Eskelinen 2001)

∞

Twitter Poem Experiment

Posted by & filed under Poetry.

Take three statuses and try to make them something greater than an individual tweet.